The Interview With Scott Wyden Kivowitz

A few days before the announcement, I actually got to chat with Scott about the update to their legendary WordPress plugin. Check out that interview below:

P.S. We talk about the NextGen Pro plugin being updated “today” but it was technically launched yesterday.

More Questions

As it so happens so many times, after the interview is recorded I am reminded of some questions that forgot to ask Scott. He was very kind to respond. I'm sure site speed and plugin reliability are your concerns as well. Here is what he had to say about both of those topics:

WordPress, including themes and plugins, can have security issues. But so do Google, Apple, Squarespace and every other software company out there. You don’t hear about most of them. WordPress security issues come up so often because it’s easy to attack open-source software, used by 30% of the Internet. Even Microsoft had 529 vulnerabilities in 2019 alone which are individually listed here. Apple had 229.

With that said, my suggestion is to use themes and plugins from reputable companies. These are companies who update their products often for compatibility with constant changes in technology. But also companies who are updating their products, fast, to solve any security issues that may arise.

I’d recommend hosting with companies who keep their servers up to date and WordPress up to date. For example, hosts that use PHP version 5.2 and older are vulnerable to security holes not visible in PHP version 7.2 or above. So you can clog leaks by merely keeping the server up to date, which has nothing to do with WordPress.

In addition to updates, you can identify reputable companies by how active they are responding to social posts, how active they are in public forums, how they’re reviewed regularly, and so on.

Imagely's NextGen Pro

So, there you have it. Will you be updating your WordPress plugins to include NextGen Pro? How do you think your clients are going to react when they are able to book a session AND order their prints through your site?

While right now the only lab onboard to work with NextGen Pro is WHCC, that is likely to change as more labs are integrated in the system. Which professional labs would you like to see work with this application?

If you are handy with WordPress (and even if you are not, the folks at Imagely will help you out), I hope you will consider this WordPress plugin.

Why The Stress?

Let me assure you that you aren't the only photographer to have issues launching your website. Go to any photography conference or even a local gathering, and you'll hear a common refrain: “I'm working on my website.”

That's code for: “I am still trying to figure it all out.” And there is absolutely no judgment, ok? I am in the same boat as you.

Let me break it to you gently – a lot of photographers like you and I are finding it challenging to establish a presence online. Yes, WordPress is a ubiquitous platform and you may have heard that one can easily optimize WordPress websites for search engines. All true, but designing one from scratch isn't always easy or fun. And you can only watch so many YouTube videos to chase down the exact solution you are looking for.

I have to admit that WordPress templates are wonderful and they are a great way to start one's web design. But they can be limiting, if you don't know the in's and out's of WordPress. So, if you are a photographer who needs to gain back control of your domain, pay close attention to what I am about to say.

No Stress WordPress

If you are even remotely interested in understanding how WordPress works but think you will need to be neck-deep in code, think again. Dave Foy has worked as a web developer for 14 years. Before that, he was a primary school teacher in the United Kingdom.

In his course, No Stress WordPress, he will teach you to design your website using WordPress and a plugin called Elementor. The instruction is comprehensive without it being overly challenging. He walks you through a “starter site” that you can then reuse again and again. He walks you through the jargon, truly making the experience stress-free. And I personally like the way he teaches. The course is very well structured and moves at a pace that is just right. While I may have used WordPress for a number of years, I discovered a lot of new and useful information. In fact, Tiffinbox (this website) will be redesigned using the steps he has outlined in his course!

Interview With Dave Foy

I spoke with Dave Foy at length about “No Stress WordPress” today:

If you have considered designing a website for your photography business, but you found yourself stuck in the process, this post provides you with a solution that you simply cannot ignore. Sign up now for No Stress WordPress. If you wish to split your payments, there is that option. However, if you are ready to make changes now, you can receive some fast-action bonuses if you commit to this course before March 1 at 5 pm EST.

On The Fence?

Still on the fence about “No Stress WordPress“? I understand the trepidation. However, do know that it is a one-time purchase and Dave Foy routinely updates the course when changes are required. Plus he is incredibly responsive to your questions in his private Facebook group. Lastly, to just get a taste of his teaching style, I implore you to check out his free mini-course. Just watch one of the four videos and then decide if his teaching style and the content is what you need to finally finish your WordPress-based website.

Full Disclosure

Yes, the links for the course, No Stress WordPress, are affiliate links. As you know I only promote the very best resources to you after diving into it myself. And in this case, I paid the full price of this course when Dave launched it back in November. I believe wholeheartedly that when you sign up and do the work, you will easily experience a five to 10 fold return on your investment. Plus, with the course being updated all the time, you don't need to worry that you have bought yet another course that has gone stale. Dave is committed to teaching and staying current with the latest advances in WordPress and the Elementor plugin.

JPEGmini Pro To The Rescue

There are five splendid reasons to use JPEGmini Pro. Before we get into those, though, I wanted to introduce you to Mitch Schneider, Director of Marketing for the slick and useful application.

Mitch and I ran into each other at the Photo Plus Expo in New York City. It's an annual event, and the trade show floor is packed with vendors and photographers from all over the world.

Having heard of JPEGmini Pro from a couple of photographer friends, I was intrigued to find out more. So, I stood a the JPEGmini booth and watched Mitch and his colleague patiently describe their software and demonstrate how quickly it minimized file sizes, and also how efficiently it did it without any perceptible loss of the quality of the final images.

My ears perked up as Mitch spoke because for years Photoshop had a “save as web” option and when Adobe released Photoshop CC, that option just disappeared. I missed that because creating web versions of my 20mb files was a quick two-step process. Now with it gone, it was just too laborious – I had to set the resolution and then manually open, crop and then save the images. One by one. Blech! Perhaps I was doing it all wrong. In any case, it was eating away at my productivity.

As a hopeful alternative, I even looked at Dr. Russell Brown's scripts, panels and actions, but for whatever reason, I simply couldn't get those to work on my system. I desperately needed a way to scale down the photographs quickly and optimize them for the web.

When I first heard about JPEGmini and the JPEGmini Pro option, I was genuinely hopeful that it would speed up my workflow. And it has. Remarkably so, with a few additional benefits that I didn't expect!

The Interview

A few weeks back, Mitch agreed to be interviewed online to chat about JPEGmini and JPEGmini Pro. He was just as excited as I was with the new Photoshop extension that allows photographers to export out their photographs directly from Photoshop CC.

A Personal Example

A few months back, I upgraded to a Nikon D750. The RAW file sizes are humongous. Try 27.5 megabytes on for size! The high resolution JPEG's are approximately 14 megabytes.

Imagine if you had to upload 500 or 800 of those to ShootProof? [Affiliate Link] It would take you forever. And frankly, juggling family and professional life, who has time to baby those files like that?

So, that's why I lean on JPEGmini Pro now. If I have a batch of five or more photographs to process, they are enhanced in Photoshop and saved to a special folder. I simply drag and drop the files into JPEGmini Pro and it does its magic.

It can either save over the original files (I recommend making a copy of your files just for safety's sake) or you can have those images sent to a new folder, directing the application to constrict the photograph's width or height in the process.

Quality & Quantity

When a couple I photographed in Connecticut ordered a 20″x30″ canvas print for their home in North Carolina, I attempted to send a 14 megabyte file to Pixel2Canvas. Their online system, however, only accepts files that are 10 megabytes in size or smaller. JPEGmini Pro to the rescue!

I dropped my file into the application and it generated a 7.5 megabyte file – essentially a 47% reduction in file size – for production. And yes, I couldn't see any loss of quality and the client was thrilled with the final results.

Still not convinced? I ran into this video that shows a graphic artist who is printing large photographs for a photographer client of his. Clearly the graphic artist is stumped by how indistinguishable the regular JPEG file and the JPEGmini files are!

5 Reasons To Use JPEGmini Pro

Ok, let's get into the five reasons JPEGmini Pro is a no-brainer for any photographer.

1) Save Space

Thousands of photographs that take up space in your hard drives right now could take up even less space if you ran them through JPEGmini or JPEGmini Pro. The larger your JPG files, the greater the need you have to shrink them down. Imagine you could reduce your hard drive needs by 47%. Space saved is money saved.

2) Save Time

Do I have to tell you that uploading a 20 megabyte file takes longer than a 5 megabyte file? The time you save is money made.

3) SEO Benefits

Search engines are assigning a higher rank to those websites that load faster. If you have photographs on your site and they are 200 kilobytes or more, they are slowing your site down. Run your photographs through this app, shrink them down in file size and then upload them to your website. You'll see the difference and so will Google!

4) Extensions For Photoshop & Lightroom

Each of us has our own workflow and style. Some of us like to save full resolution JPEGs to a folder, copy the folder and then drag the files into JPEGmini Pro. Others, would prefer to send those files directly from Photoshop or Lightroom. And now you can! The company announced easy-to-install extensions into Photoshop or Lightroom that will give you direct access to JPEGmini. This again saves time (and money) in my opinion. This option is only available if you buy JPEGmini Pro, though.

5) The $99 Price

On the heels of their announcement about the Photoshop and Lightroom extensions, Beamr, JPEGmini's parent company also announced a price reduction to $99 for JPEGmini Pro. So, the price is right, right now. But this is for a limited time only.

JPEGmini or JPEGmini Pro?

I wondered that too. If I had continued using my Nikon D700, I am sure JPEGmini would have sufficed. But with the Nikon D750, the file sizes are so much bigger that I had no choice but to lean on JPEGmini Pro. That's one factor in choosing between the two options.

JPEGmini Pro as I mentioned above is now only $99 (regularly $149), whereas JPEGmini is $19.99. So, if your budget is tight, you may have to make some hard choices between the two options.

One of the five reasons should have included – speed – because JPEGmini Pro is some eight times faster than JPEGmini. It's just the way the application uses the core engines in your computer to make that magic happen.

Ok, I know making a decision sometimes can be challenging. That's why when I started to poke around this app, I downloaded the free trial to see how it worked. I suggest you do the same. Give it a try to see how much space and time you can save. I believe there is a limit of 10 photographs you can process per day. But the free trial is limited by how large your files are to begin with, so take that into consideration.

Suzette Allen and her husband Jon Yoshinaga are busy photographers based in Sacramento, California. While the west coast is home, the duo are on the road several months out of the year photographing clients across the country and teaching photographers new techniques that enhance client's portrait experiences well beyond the session.

Hybrid Imaging – the use of video, still pictures and audio – isn't new. It's been attempted before. But not like how Suzette and Jon approach it. It would seem that technology had to grow up a bit first. Aren't you glad you are a photographer in 2016?

The Interview

Listen to our conversation below to find out more about Live Portraits:

What is Imagely?

Why WordPress? Well, did you know that nearly 25% of the websites in the world run on the WordPress platform? That's a staggering number of websites and a great many photographers lean on a self-hosted WordPress themed website or blog for their business.

But not everyone has the time or the technical skills to work on the platform. Tiffinbox, for instance, was custom designed by someone who knows her way through the theme and its back end. Now, not everyone can have a custom designed site or needs to have it specifically designed for them. That can come later when the dollars start flowing in from sales, right?

As a photographer, he wanted to quickly and painlessly deliver his client's photographs. He wanted to upload his images once and then be able to deliver different versions to different clients. His solution: Cloud Spot.

I trust you have affiliates or business partners who simply have different needs for your photographs and they don't all fit neatly into one standard dimension. Imgaine you are a wedding photographer who has just photographed a Jewish wedding and you have some photographs of the huppa. Some of your wedding vendor friends will only need a postage sized version of the images, while the wedding planner you are wooing might want the photographs with your watermark to display on her Facebook page.

Do you sit there scaling up and scaling down the same photographs as and when someone requests it? It wouldn't be very efficient use of your time, right? That's where Cloud Spot excels.

I spoke with Gavin Wade about Cloud Spot and how it has saved his wedding photography business tons of time. Give this interview a listen and see if Cloud Spot is something you want to consider using for your photography business as well:

Ever wanted to send some of your special clients discount codes? Well, you can now with Cloud Spot:

Your online store's back end should look this easy to manage:

There are six pricing options, including one that is totally FREE (jpeg imaages only). The Entry option is only $4/month and allows you to store and share JPG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, PSD, AI and PDF files. Granted you only get 5gb of space, but if your photography business is just starting up, this should do really well for you for now. You can always scale up!

Gavin has generously offered all Tiffinbox readers a special discount code. Use: tiffin10 – good for any monthly or annual plan when you sign up here.

When Brett Jarnagin and I connected, it was at Photo Plus Expo some years back. The funny thing is, he didn't remember me from way back then. But the guy can be excused because he was manning a busy booth and he must have talked to thousands of other photographers on that day in New York.

Fast forward to just a few weeks back and I came to know that Brett is the brains behind Lightroom Retouching Toolkit. As someone who enjoys working quickly and efficiently on his iMac, I was naturally intrigued about what Brett was promoting.

Let me tell ya, the experience is amazing. Yes, it does take a little effort in learning where some of the buttons are, but once you repeatedly use the interface, you should be all set. As always the more you practice with the presets and settings and dial them to your liking and make the program really do what you want it to do, the better your results are going to be.

I sat down with Brett to talk to him about Lightroom Retouching Toolkit; to better understand why he decided this was a good time to bring this to market and how it has helped him and other photographers in the industry to sail through the dreaded tasking of retouching skin in particular and portraits, in general.

Oh, one more thing. You want to know how generous Brett is? Even before I could say, “hey, can you hook my audience with a discount code,” he sent me a quick text to say that he would be happy to extend a 20% discount code to all of you if you wanted to buy Lightroom Retouching Toolkit today.